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Hey Folks,
We’re already at the end of 2017 and it means also the end of Q4 at Cognitive UxD. Based on your insights I’ve just made a list of the most popular articles in Psychology & UX over the past 3-months. Enjoy it!
I also opened the Donation program for Cognitive UxD. If you like my project initiative so far and - if you can - please help me and support my work so I’ll be able to provide high-quality content for you in the future without any sponsored ads. 🙏

Psychology in UX

Often I have found that UX designers lack clear problem definitions before starting the UX design process. Of course, we perform standard research and validation of the current system but even then it still feels like we need to “dig” even deeper in order to get the full picture.
This is exactly how I felt during my recent UX project, a redesign of a module in an application I was working on called OLM. So talking about digging… I thought to myself “archaeologists also dig a lot”. So what do UX designers and archaeologists have in common?

In general, I think that a product is only as good as its ability to co-opt behavior. Techcrunch is littered with the stale remains of gorgeous products that were executed to perfection but failed to get any true user adoption. They failed to fit into, or change, the behavior patterns of their users.
This point is obvious. The question now becomes: Why did they fail to fit into, or change, the behavior patterns of their users? In general, when a behavior doesn’t occur, it’s because at least one of the three following things is missing (or insufficient). Motivation, Ability, Trigger

Accessibility

On accessibility and use cases for dark vs. light UI. Thinking about color schemes for the UI of your current design project? Here are three aspects to consider as you design your next interface, along with examples of different applications in the wild. Readability: “…most studies have shown that dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characters on a light background.” — Reference: Bauer, D., & Cavonius, C., R. (1980)

Human Cognition

One reason that goal gradient patterns occur, at least in humans, is that people judge late-state events to have greater value than equivalent early-stage events. In many situations, this makes perfect sense because the ratio of benefit to (remaining) cost increases as one approaches a goal. For example, when someone must rate 10 more songs to receive $10, the expected value of rating the next song is $1. In contrast, when the person advances and must rate only 2 more songs to receive $10, the expected value of rating the next song is $5.

Have you ever wondered why your users do not interact with your product the way you hope? Persuading people to perform a particular action, like signing up or buying a product, is a challenge in most industries, especially when you want that action to be performed repeatedly. As UX practitioners, we try to create the best conditions for users to complete their tasks, and yet even the most usable interface is sometimes not enough to engage users. Why is that? To understand the reasons behind what drives users to certain behaviors, we need to look at the psychology that underlies the process of initiating and performing a behavior.

Books and Resources 📖

What do an overnight 40% drop in road accidents, a night in on the sofa watching TV and a good night’s sleep have to do with digital product design? Humans only have limited mental capacity and no-one is ever operating at 100%. We are all influenced by the world around us and by how our minds work. As designers we need to be able to understand this and design for it.
The power of 100 is a powerful way to understand the modern world we are designing for. How your website or app will be used in real life and to design for how people live their lives today. Combining psychology theory and the latest in UX techniques, the power of 100 is a modern design framework that matches the modern complex world we and our users live in.

Neuroscience & UX

Susan Weinschenk joined us in our Slack channel yesterday in what was one of the most popular sessions that I’ve run to date. She did a stellar job of keeping up with the quick-fire questions and the hour flew by. The session marked the culmination of our theme for November – how psychology and neuroscience help us design for people. We used Susan’s book 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People as the inspiration for our discussions so it was a fitting way to end the month.